A Christmas Miracle
by Kallamae
Summary: The Reapers have been destroyed, but at what cost? The Normandy is missing and Shepard shows no signs of ever waking up from a coma. Sounds like they could all use a Christmas miracle. A hopeful little epilogue to the destroy ending born of a plot bunny from Santa.


_The Reapers had been destroyed. Along with the Geth, the relays, and anything else that had even a hint of their ancient code. The Citadel survived. Or rather, large pieces of it did. The verdict was still out on Commander Jane Shepard. And the _Normandy_ was stranded only God knew where. Admiral Steven Hackett stood at his office window and surveyed the seemingly little that months of recovery and reconstruction had accomplished. If there was ever a time for a Christmas miracle..._

Kaidan gently placed the Turian cruiser back in its berth over the desk. It was the last one. The glass door slid shut with a tiny clink. The case had been broken and several of the models knocked loose on the rough flight to wherever the hell they were. He'd been piecing them all back together in his spare time. She'd want everything put to rights.

With a heavy sigh he sat back in the office chair and quickly looked away from his haggard reflection in the blank terminal. Instead his eyes went to one of the photos on the desk. His fingers traced over the happy faces. They'd taken it back in Anderson's apartment after the party she'd thrown. One last hurrah before going back to their respective places in the war with renewed vigor for the final push. He set the picture back down as he wondered if the apartment was still there. The Citadel had taken some heavy damage before they'd lost contact.

The other picture brought a sad smile to his lips. Neither face looked out of the image. They'd been too caught in each other to even notice the approaching photographer until the Volus with the camera offered to sell the image. Shepard had rolled her eyes, but he'd handed over a credit stick.

He rubbed any shred of welling emotion out of his eyes. A long, controlled breath brought things back into focus.

Her nameplate still sat on the far edge of the desk. When he'd refused to post her name on the memorial wall with the others, no one pressed. No one even suggested it now after so many months. He knew some of the crew silently questioned it, but he wouldn't give up on her. Never again.

The cabin door chimed. "Come in," he called.

"Kaidan?" Liara stepped softly into the room. Her eyes wandered over the case of model ships. "You finished."

He nodded. "Just now actually."

"It looks good." She twined her fingers together. "Everyone's ready. They wanted you to have the honor of 'flipping the switch'?" she said questioning the phrase.

"Turning the lights on," he explained.

"I see," she said slowly.

Kaidan chuckled. "You will," he promised. He motioned for Liara to step into the elevator ahead of him. "Garrus and Tali coming?"

"Tali is. She's quite excited about it all. Garrus scowled when I asked him, but I'm sure Tali will convince him. The crew seems very happy about it all."

Kaidan stepped out into a cargo bay full of expectant faces. Most people held small cups and by the sly grins that passed between Vega and Cortez, he guessed it was something home-brewed. Officially, he hadn't seen anything. As much as they tried to keep Alliance order and discipline, the Major wouldn't deny them a little alcohol at a holiday party.

As he approached the podium made of stacked weapon crates, he thought about every forced smile that covered a grimace and every hopeful speech Shepard had made while feeling the sting of desperation. He plastered on a smile and faced the crew.

"I could talk about how we've all banded together to overcome our fears and make the best of a difficult situation or the progress we've made on repairs, but I'll save all that for the next brief. Except to say that the second toilet in the men's head is available again." A cheer rose from a group of Marines probably well into their cups. Laughter rippled through the rest of the crowd.

"Today, we're going to take an afternoon and savor a little piece of victory. The Reapers tried to destroy more than our lives; they wanted to eliminate our very culture, break the alliances and unities formed by so many different species." He looked at the faces of his stranded crew and pushed away his thoughts about the bitter edge to their success. "They failed," he continued. "We're still alive and we still hold our allies close. More than common need binds us together as a crew. We're friends. We're family. You don't have to be Human to celebrate this old Earth holiday with us." He held a hand out to the aliens of the crew. "We've got a few here who don't really understand what this is all about. Let's show them." Glasses raised and his words became an impromptu toast.

Looking around at faces he'd only seen tired and forlorn, now laughing, he knew this had been a good idea. He sent a nod of gratitude to the party's instigator. Vega beamed back.

Kaidan lifted the elaborate lever for all to see. A glance confirmed Cortez had a hand poised over the actual controls before he flipped the switch. The back of the hold lit up in little lights of every color carefully crafted into the tiered shape of the old-fashioned symbol of the holiday. "Merry Christmas," Kaidan called out with what he hoped sounded like genuine cheer.

After making his rounds through the crew, Kaidan slipped out of the party and went up to relieve whichever crewman had drawn the short stick of comm watch.

As he sat in front of the blank panel, he let his mind wander. Melancholy descended too easily during the holidays. It was supposed to be a time for families. And while he couldn't deny the crew of the _Normandy_ had become one, he would have been more resigned to the situation if he just knew his real family was still out there somewhere. If Earth had survived his mom might be alright, but he knew there was next to no chance his father still lived. And Shepard. He dragged a hand down his face and then back through his hair.

They should be spending the holiday together. He should be making things official, giving her a ring, building a house up on the land he owned by the coast. He should know without a doubt she was alive. His heart should just be able to feel it and pull rank on his brain. Christmas was supposed to be a time for miracles and he could sure use one.

"Thinking about Shepard?" He hadn't heard Liara step up behind him.

"Always," he answered in a voice a little huskier than usual.

She sat down at the station next to him. The orange glow of her omni-tool cast a grayish pallor over her blue skin. "I'm changing Glyph's search priorities." Kaidan waited for her to continue. "He's been prioritizing my agents' patterns while sifting through the static of all the white noise," she explained. "I was speaking with Specialist Traynor, a slightly intoxicated Specialist Traynor." A wisp of a humorous memory passed over her features. "I don't know if it was the alcohol itself or the resulting relaxation that opened her mind, but she had some new ideas."

"I'm not sure what I'm supposed to say here," Kaidan admitted.

Liara laughed lightly. "Nothing. I'm rambling." She waved her hand. "I'm avoiding all the intricacies of quantum entanglement theory and the difference between Alliance, Asari, and Shadow communication protocols."

"Thank you for that." Kaidan crossed his arms and leaned back.

"We thought of a new way to manipulate our mayday and search for traces of any signals." She went back to entering something into her omni-tool. "I'm having Glyph monitor the ship comms as his first priority. He is, after all, one of the main reasons the Shadow Broker always heard everything." She put a hand on his shoulder as she left. "Merry Christmas, Kaidan."

xxoxxOxxoxx

Admiral Hannah Shepard looked over her daughter's face. Pale and blank. Her eyes never seemed to move beneath the closed lids. A gentle, rhythmic beep assured that no matter how still she looked, Jane was alive. Hannah settled into the chair beside the bed. It had been nothing more than a crate in that first field clinic. Now it was something so comfortable it belonged in a mansion, not a hospital. Still, she was grateful to whoever had acquired it and brought it to Shepard's room. Anything to make these visits a little less uncomfortable.

Normally, Hannah would ramble on about the day's business. Classified or not. Who cared what she told to a girl in a coma? Especially when that girl probably had higher clearance anyway.

But, this evening, her mouth had gone dry. She didn't know what to say and any time she tried something, her throat closed up around the swelling emotion. No parent should have to spend a holiday this way.

The little fiery girl who stomped her foot and scowled when she wasn't allowed to try to stay awake all night and keep watch for Santa could do nothing but sleep now. The way her face lit with excitement when she discovered he'd come anyway had gone straight to Hannah's heart. She learned to have a camera ready to capture that moment and the image of the determined set to her small features when wrapping paper attempted to offer any resistance. Memories brought a reluctant smile. As Jane had neared those awkward teenage years, she became careful to lift her gifts so they blocked her face whenever Hannah snapped a picture.

She still had them. An album half-full of things in front of Jane's face. And when the girl had been severely told to lift the object higher so it wouldn't block her face, she'd smugly complied by holding it up over her head and turning her back to the camera. The rest of that album was pictures of the back of Jane's head. Even when she joined the Alliance and got shipped out, Jane would send home a picture of the back of her head every year.

Hannah laughed whenever she received another. It might be a strange tradition, but it was theirs. And she desperately wanted it to continue.

"Hannah?" the dark-haired woman asked before entering.

"Please," Hannah waved her over. "I didn't expected to see you here tonight, Miranda. You should be spending the holiday with your sister."

"We never really celebrated Christmas," the woman answered.

"All the more reason."

"Perhaps. But Ori ordered me out of the apartment until I took care of whatever problem had lodged itself in my head." Miranda's features softened when she spoke of her sister, even when it was in a sarcastic tone. "Besides, why celebrate something the day before you're meant to celebrate it?"

Hannah shook her head. Miranda Lawson was all business. Not that she'd ever complain about it. The woman had been on Earth barely a week and she was already pushing aside the hospital staff. Hannah had worried at first, but from all the things Admiral Hackett had shared, her daughter couldn't be in better hands.

Miranda scanned over Shepard's vitals and started pulling up charts above the room's main console. With every new graph, the furrow between her brows deepened. "They still have the equipment operating below my recommended target."

"What does that mean?" Hannah brought a hand to her chest.

"It means they're idiots," Miranda growled. She looked back at Shepard's mother. "In simple terms it means they're forcing her heart to beat slower than it was designed to. Her pulse and respiration are being controlled by those machine and they're just below the optimal range of the implants."

Hannah frowned. "Bare with me here. I barely passed the emergency medical training we all get and that was a good thirty years ago. And anything I might know about cybernetics would have come from a movie." She came to look at the confusing abundance of charts. "So, the equipment is making her body run on a different rhythm that it should?" she asked.

"Precisely."

"Why is that bad?" Hannah asked.

"I'm not sure there's an easy way to explain." Miranda crossed her arms. The fingers on one hand drummed against her bicep. "A poor analogy, but let's say every day someone comes into the room and tells you that this," she held up a corner of the room's bright blue curtain, "was red. Over and over, every day."

"A person would start to wonder if it really was red and they'd been mistaken all along," Hannah ventured. "It might drive them mad."

Miranda nodded. "Now, that's almost like what these machines are doing. The biological trauma has healed and the implants are all operational. But instead of relying on Shepard's own synaptic patterns, the machine is making them do things a little differently. Essentially, they're telling her body that she's been living the wrong way.

I don't see any benefit to keeping her connected to all these things." She waved her arm toward the machinery around the bed.

Hannah's voice took on an edge. "You want to turn off my daughter's life support?"

Miranda leveled her calm gaze on the Admiral. "Yes." When Hannah gritted her teeth instead of arguing, Miranda continued. "The implants are all capable of doing what the machines are, but without that interference removed, Shepard's own nervous system won't get the opportunity to re-establish its control and eventually it will start to believe that blue is red."

Hannah took her daughter's hand and ran her thumb over the too prominent knuckles. Jane looked so fragile. She swallowed past the lump in her throat. "You really believe it will help?"

Miranda nodded sharply. "I believe it will do more than help. I believe it will allow her body to abandon its comatose state and revive fully. There _is_ a small chance of complication," she conceded. "But nothing I wouldn't be able to control. And any unanticipated reaction would be highly unlikely." She glanced at the closed door. "I also believe that staff here would absolutely disagree."

"Yes, well, the staff here haven't really accomplished much, have they?" Hannah's chin tilted defiantly upward.

Miranda laughed. "Now I know where Shepard got it from."

Her hand flew gracefully over the controls, rearranging the layout of different monitors. "Twenty-three, forty-eight," Miranda noted. Hannah glanced down at her watch. Twelve minutes to Christmas.

"Let's begin." Miranda pressed a few keys and the rhythmic beeping stalled into a low, continuous whine.

xxoxxOxxoxx

Corporal Andy Finn checked the time. Just after fourteen hundred. His shift would be over in a few more hours and he'd still have some of Christmas left to do something with. The party in the barracks maybe. It wasn't like the town was really hopping. He wondered if that cute blonde would be there. He'd seen her walk through the chow hall last week. She'd been wearing scrubs and didn't move like a Marine. Sometimes the staff came over from the hospital since they were so close and most of their patients were military. They'd might as well be a part of the base.

Her face looked too kind to be a doctor and she hadn't seemed in any kind of rush. He imagined doctors must always be hurrying to get to their next patient. He hoped she was there. If he could learn her name, he could look her up in the-

Static popped in his headset. The panels didn't show anything. He looked over all the connections. All the lines looked good, nothing loose. But he was sure he'd heard it. Slowly, he drifted through all the active channels and then switched to look through every available band. He adjusted their boost. Nothing.

He looked sideways at the Q.E.C. Panel. No one ever did more than watch and listen to the emptiness in that handful of special channels. He looked more closely at the other set of controls. Why not? He scooted his chair over. It was Christmas. Perfect time for a miracle, right?

The controls all looked familiar, but he hesitated before touching them. Quantum theory went a little beyond the beginning comm training he'd received before the Reapers struck. Courses had been canceled and they'd all been recalled to combat units.

After wiping his sweaty palms on his pants legs, he slowly began adjusting things. He kept a careful record in case he screwed something up. His headphones crackled with static again. It _had_ come from a quantum feed. "Alright," he said to the controls. "Let's do this."

After nearly an hour of painstaking fiddling, the system registered a clear ping. "The crackling resolved into a modulating voice. "Please stand by for Doctor T'Soni."

"Holy Shit!" he yelled and then immediately crossed himself. His mother would have no qualms about washing his mouth out with soap if she heard him swear like that. Especially on Christmas. And even more especially when he might be witnessing an actual miracle.

He fumbled over the normal set of controls to call down Admiral Hackett.

Hackett wasted no time abandoning the officer's Christmas mess and making his way to the comm center. A clearly frustrated young corporal squinted at the blurry image while listening intently through the static.

"Who do we have?" Hackett asked.

"Sir." Finn immediately jumped to his feet and was pulled roughly back down when the cord of his headset turned out to be not quite as long as he was tall. A wild panic filled his eyes before he finally bent his knees to mostly stand and snapped a crisp salute.

"At ease." The Admiral cleared his throat to cover his reflexive chuckle.

"Sir, it's the _Normandy_."

All traces of amusement fled. He looked closely at the heavily pixelated blur of blue and gray. The connection was bad. He'd never seen the Q. E. C. worse, even when talking to Anderson in the middle of bombardments. "Can we clean it up?" he asked.

"I'm trying, sir," the private answered. "I never trained on anything this complex. Specialist Traynor is trying to help me troubleshoot.

Hackett recognized the name and relaxed a little. Maybe it was the mulled wine, but he thought before the evening ended, he'd be back in contact with the missing _Normandy_. Silently, he thanked whatever higher power had made looking after that ship its sole mission.

xxoxxOxxoxx

Samantha had been too excited by her new theory to spend much more time at the party. That and she was finally sober enough not to make a complete fool of herself in front Liara and the Major. She relieved him from staring at a blank screen. With a large cup of water, she settled in. This plan had to work.

It wasn't long before Liara raced to the console. "Glyph's got something."

They abandoned the monitoring console and hurried into the comm booth. Nearly an hour passed before they turned "something" into a working connection. Through the interference, Samantha had blindly worked to correct things on the other end. The tech's patience and willingness to meticulously follow her instructions helped. It had still been difficult. But so worth it.

Liara had pulled the Major in when things had started to look like they would really work. She'd never seen the man look so flustered. But he'd been kind enough to keep the nervous pacing outside the doorway.

The image of a young, harried Marine finally jumped to life in the comm bay. "Yes." he cried almost in unison with Samantha.

Liara called Kaidan back into the booth as Admiral Hackett's image replaced the young tech. "Major."

Kaidan snapped off a quick salute. It might not have been exactly protocol to end it without permission, but he dropped his hand regardless. There were more important things. "Admiral. Damn good to see you."

"I could say the same for you. What's the short version?"

"Crash landing," Kaidan said. He bit back the urge to ask about Shepard. Whether good news or bad, he didn't trust himself to continue briefing the Admiral in any coherent manner once he knew. "Still not sure where exactly. So far the planet seems uninhabited, but it's temperate. We've been trying to repair, took a lot of damage." He cleared his throat. "We, ah, lost the ship's A.I., so it's been slow-going."

Hackett rubbed his chin. "Reaper tech?"

"Yes, sir."

"We're still not sure how or why, but all Reaper codes simultaneously went corrupt and erased themselves. Bastards just stopped dead and dropped out of the sky. Ground teams reported seeing some kind of red lightning."

"We observed something similar before crashing." He nodded his head slowly. It made sense. "There was a lot of Reaper tech built into the ship's systems."

Hackett frowned at something out of the frame. "Relays are still down. From the same blast," he added. "I think the latest plan to cross my desk involved attempting to coax a few keepers out there to see if they could do anything."

Kaidan crossed his arms. "Worth a shot. Something must have kept them in good repair after every cycle."

Hackett turned again to whatever he'd been frowning at earlier. "My God," he muttered. He turned sharply back to the comm and smiled. Kaidan didn't know that he'd ever seen the Admiral so much as grin ruefully before. "Major, it seems you picked a good day to re-establish communications."

"All that credit needs to go to Specialist Traynor and Doctor T'Soni," Kaidan said. "And the tech on your end."

Hackett continued to smile. "Go ahead and ask. I know it's killing you not to."

His heart hammered. The man wouldn't smile and prompt the question if the answer was bad. His brain acknowledged that, but it didn't stop his nerves from running rampant. "Is she...?"

"We found her in wreckage from the Citadel. Her injuries were severe and she's been in a coma." He paused. "She just woke up," the Admiral said slowly. Or perhaps time itself had slowed. Kaidan felt a little disconnected from everything but those few words.

"She's alive," he mouthed. He had meant to speak aloud. And maybe he had, but he couldn't hear much beyond the blood rushing in his ears. His hand went to his chest and his knees started to buckle. He latched on to the curved bar in front of him to stay on his feet. The tears that had threatened most of the day finally fell. He bowed his head and let the emotion wash over him. Relief made him feel lightheaded after so many months under the heaviness of doubt.

Hackett turned toward the other call to give the Major some time to recover. Anderson had told him, but he hadn't really understood the depth of their relationship until he'd just witnessed Major Alenko's reaction. If Anderson were still alive, he'd owe him a hundred credits and a bottle of brandy. Hackett had known about, and officially ignored, the romantic relationship, but he'd scoffed when Anderson brought the idea of "soul mates" into the conversation.

"Are you sure Ms. Lawson?" He tapped a finger over his mouth as she answered. "Alright," he said. "As long as Hannah agrees."

For the next hour, the two officers went back to the business of trying to confirm the _Normandy's_ position and forwarding damage reports to the Quarian Fleet along with an inventory of available repair materials. If anyone had the engineers to make a broken down skycar, a pistol and chow hall mashed potatoes spaceworthy, it was the Quarians. Hopefully repairing the _Normandy_ wouldn't prove to be that big a challenge.

Kaidan looked down to read off a list of dwindling medical resources. When he glanced back up, Hackett had been replaced by the frail frame of Shepard waving off help as she used a cane to stand up from the wheelchair. The neat stacks of datapads and reports clattered to the floor. He leaned forward as if he could reach out and support her. Just curl an arm around her waist and steady her against him.

"Jane," he said in a reverent whisper. "You're okay?"

She wrinkled her nose. "Okay about covers it. But now that I'm up, things will get better soon." Whatever had happened, it hadn't mellowed her stubborn streak.

"I love you." Again he tried to reach out to the image. "I was so worried. So damned worried. I love you," he said again.

The comm couldn't show it, but he knew the smile she gave would have brightened her eyes. "I love you too. I'm glad I missed the months of worrying about you though. Pretty convenient to wake up and have people tell me everything is alright and bring me right to you. And maybe it's better that you're however many million light years away right now." She didn't pause long enough for his features to work into a frown. "The doc was very insistent on the whole 'no physical exertion' bit."

Kaidan mirrored her smirk. "Then I guess you'd better get started on rehab because I'm going to be home as soon as I can and it would make for a very boring honeymoon if you were still under doctor's orders."

"As if I needed more motivation." The smile faded as she clenched her jaw. Her legs began to tremble and the combined power of both her mother and Miranda raising an eyebrow convinced her to let them help her back into the wheelchair before her legs gave out. "You just get home," she said. "I'll be waiting."

"Yes, ma'am," Kaidan answered gently. "And Shepard?"

"Hmm?"

"Merry Christmas." He finally said it without having to force the cheer into his tone.

"Is it?" she asked. "I guess they neglected the 'What day is it?' part of my evaluation. Happy Christmas, Kaidan," she said more seriously. Then added, "Next year I expect the ring to go with that question you didn't actually ask."

Hannah stepped behind the wheelchair and snapped a picture of Shepard's messy hair tumbling down over her shoulders as her head titled up to Kaidan's holographic image. She exhaled almost half a decade's worth of a mother's worry. The war had finally ended for her with a Christmas miracle and another picture for the album. And the promise of even greater joy in a newly restored future.


End file.
